As Congress returns from a three-week holiday break, those are a few of the ideas for how to pay for extending an average $20-a-week Social Security payroll tax cut through the end of 2012 without adding to the government's long-term debt.

As Americans honor King's memory 44 years after he was assassinated, the image of the slain civil rights leader is evolving.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Muslim man was sentenced Friday to life in prison for joining a failed plot to firebomb John F. Kennedy Airport in 2007 by blowing up jet fuel supplies with the help of a notorious al-Qaida explosives expert.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- In mailboxes across South Carolina in 2007, likely Republican voters received a Christmas card signed by "The Romney Family" with a quotation from a 19th century Mormon leader suggesting God had several wives.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seeking more power to shrink the government, President Barack Obama on Friday suggested smashing six economic agencies into one, an election-year idea intended to halt bureaucratic nightmares and force Republicans to back him on one of their own favorite issues.

CHICAGO (AP) -- Controversy over a Cook County ordinance that forbids the sheriff from notifying federal officials when they're about to release suspected illegal immigrants from jail is heating up after a suspect charged in a fatal hit-and-run posted bail and disappeared.

BEND, Ore. (AP) -- A proposed Central Oregon wind project is the first in the country to be considered for a permit that allows wind turbines to kill a few golden eagles so long as developers make up for the loss, federal officials say.

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A lawyer planned to ask a federal judge on Friday to reject a call for almost three years of prison time and instead give probation to a Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to siphoning $650,000 over eight years from his northwest Las Vegas parish gift shop, votive candle collection and prayer funds to support his gambling habit.

FLANDREAU, S.D. (AP) -- It seems an unlikely concept: teenagers forgoing the immediacy of a McDonald's Big Mac to don an apron, grab a meat patty and learn how to cook their own lower-fat version in the kitchen.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy.